13 Morts 1/2

A 1980'S version of "Scream." I found myself laughing more than anything. "The Breather," made me laugh. I couldn't help it. I thought I was supposed to laugh. The guy is making snide remarks and breathing like a horny 12 year old for the entire movie. The cast is unknowns, which makes the movie a sort of cult classic for me. I enjoy the film because it's just plain old silly. It's not gory and it's not in the least bit scary. It makes fun, more than anything, how murder victims in horror movies end up. You'd never see a killer walking around with a bunch of Hefty trash bags as their weapon, but in this film it's used purely for the laughs and after a while it does get old, but "the Breather" will make you laugh enough to watch the whole thing. Good for a Halloween laugh.

I stumbled upon this flick by accident. I was more interested in the other side of the Commander USA double feature. I just figured this was some lame 80s slasher flick. To my surprise, it was an Airplane style spoof of the slasher flicks of the late 70s/early 80s. In fact, it almost plays like a parody of "Scream", years before it came out. Everyone tries to figure out who the killer is that is picking off the students. The killer calls up and breathes heavy. Every horror fan should check this out!

Before "Scary Movie" decided to spoof the slasher genre, the 80s had its very own send-up called "Student Bodies". It came quite early you might add, even before the sub-genre had completely hit it off. Anyhow despite that, we know where the ammo for this fun is coming from. "Halloween" and "Black Christmas" comes to mind. Quite variable, but this cheeky and in bad-taste enterprise pokes fun at everything (no one… that's no one is safe), including itself which makes it enjoyably amusing as the typical stereotypes are turn upside down. The story is old-hat and a little tame, but the craziness of the situations makes it hard not to get a tickle out of it. The script holds an exceedingly self-knowing attitude, filled with smart-lipped dialogues and the humour is visually evident too. Slapstick bumbling (the murderer's weapon of choice is just ridiculous) to the humorous use of subtitles pointing out the obvious. The intro perfectly paints it ("I have the feeling this is the last time I baby sit"). Even the music score gets into the action. The apparent genre staples are turned into gags, because how blatant they are in a story's progression for things to work. Horny students, suspicious red herrings, virgin heroine and of course heavy breathing. Some gags are repeatedly used, some to good effect and others became a little tiring. After halfway through it was starting to wear a little thin, but then it breaks out even more insane revelations… one topped off by another. There are about three climaxes! The ending has a nice little homage to a horror classic… which you simply see coming. The performances are spot-on, aiming for a mock seriousness approach and it works with the kooky array of memorable characters like Malvert the janitor. A more than decent little slasher parody.

I didn't find it to be hilarious, but it is an amusing horror spoof; generally I've found horror comedies to be funnier than horror spoofs.

The movie starts by noting how many horror movies have been made recently, and that they've all made money. We see a shot of a house at night with ominous music, and a caption reading "Halloween." This fades out, and then fades back up with the caption "Friday the 13th," which fades out and is replaced by the caption "Jamie Lee Curtis' Birthday" (the movie doesn't say, but that is November 22). This is an early indicator of the cheap and silly humor of the movie.

A heavy breathing killer wearing black boots and green rubber gloves makes phone calls to the babysitter in the house. After she looks outside for a cat that turns out to be a meowing dog with gas, she leaves the door unlocked (a caption and arrow call additional attention to this fact). Her boyfriend shows up, he's turned on by something that should be a turnoff, but he leaves the room (this series of actions repeats throughout the movie). The killer enters the house, and picks from a collection of weapons under a rolltop desk: a gun, knife, noose, hatchet, pack of cigarettes, paperclip. He picks the silliest one, of course. The girl dies by the silly weapon, and the guy gets killed by suffocating in a large black trash bag (this MO repeats too; the weapon is always different, but always silly).

A number of people at the school wear the same things the killer does, making them suspects to the audience, who knows, but not to the police. In fact, I'm not sure there are police - the school itself seems to be in charge of investigating the murders. The one person in the movie that becomes a suspect to other characters is a virgin girl.

Lots and lots of silliness in the movie, too much to cover. Anyone that likes silly spoof movies is likely to find something to make them laugh here.

Whatever happened to the actor "The Stick"?

The first 20 or so minutes of the movie are pretty funny. Sure, there are some cheesy gags in there, but there is a jovial spirit that makes even these lamer gags ones that make you giggle. However, after that part of the movie ends, the frequency of the gags that work grows slower and slower. Eventually, the laughs totally stop and the remaining portion of the movie is somewhat painful to sit through. I suspect that the major production problems that happened during filming are the chief culprit here, not only explaining the drop in humor but also how some things don't make any sense even for a goofy comedy. (It would also explain how some additional gags seem to have been added in the movie during post-production.) There are laughs here - even a few that would be considered classics of some kind - but nowhere enough. Actually, considering how many visuals of the Dr. Pepper logo that are displayed, maybe it was intended as a commercial instead of an actual movie!